


This Is (Not) a Love Story

by Mireille



Series: Leaving is all I've ever known before [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-03
Updated: 2006-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 09:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13568058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: He's not sure what this is, but it isn't love. Set between S5 and S6.





	This Is (Not) a Love Story

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** There are bullet points. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Xander wasn't sure how Giles had turned out to be his responsibility, but somehow, he had. 

_His and Anya's_ responsibility, Xander corrected himself. Okay, Anya wasn't on her way over to Giles' place after work to check up on him as non-obviously as possible, but she was doing her part. Now that she was able to go back to work, she was keeping the Magic Box running without Giles there, coming in when the shop opened and not leaving until it closed, and that was important. And it was no less necessary just because she'd given herself a dollar an hour raise and a promotion. Someone had to look after the store, and Anya was good at that. 

And someone had to look after Giles, and Xander was... the only one available. Willow and Tara were taking care of Dawn, and Spike--no matter what he might think--was absolutely not allowed to take care of anything, which more or less answered his question about how Giles had become his job. _And Anya's_ , he reminded himself. 

The front door to Giles' place wasn't locked, so Xander didn't have to wonder what he'd do if Giles wouldn't let him in. He just turned the doorknob, hesitating for a moment before opening the door all the way. He didn't know what he was going to find. Giles had been Buffy's Watcher, after all. He'd probably fallen completely apart. Xander's imagination gave him a picture of a darkened living room littered with empty liquor bottles, and Giles--rumpled, unshowered, unshaven, and looking completely miserable--slumped in the chair in the corner, a glass of Scotch in his hand.

The lights were on when Xander stepped through the doorway; Giles was sitting at his desk, a couple of oversized books open in front of him and a mug of what Xander assumed was tea sitting just within reach. He looked tired, but everyone Xander knew looked tired. Why would Giles be any different? He definitely wasn't the disheveled mess Xander had been expecting, and Xander wasn't sure whether he was relieved or a little disappointed. Even drunk, Giles would probably be easier to deal with than his dad, and at least then, Xander would know what to do. 

Giles didn't seem all that surprised to see him. "If Willow sent you--" he began, and Xander shook his head. He knew Willow had asked Giles to give her the bare-bones information on all the demons he could remember Buffy running across on patrol; it was part of their probably-stupid-but-what-else-could-they-do? plan to use that robot Spike had had built (and could someone remind Xander why they were letting him near Dawn?) to keep anyone from knowing what had happened to Buffy. 

"I don't think she's ready for that stuff yet," Xander said. "I just, um, dropped in."

"And you're always welcome," Giles said, with a tight smile that wouldn't have fooled Xander in his sleep, "but as you can see, you've caught me at rather a busy time."

Xander knew a brush-off when he heard one. "Yeah. Sorry about that," he mumbled. "Just, you know. Checking in to make sure everything's okay. We haven't seen much of you lately." 

"I'm fine," Giles said, but he made the mistake of looking up at Xander, and that just confirmed what Xander already knew: Giles wasn't any more "fine" than the rest of them; he just wasn't going to admit it. "Tell Anya I'm sorry to leave her short-handed," Giles added, "but I thought it best to finish this as quickly as possible."

Xander shrugged. "She's having the time of her life," he said, giving Giles a quick smile, and left before he asked Giles if he was okay again. 

He wasn't really in the mood to be lied to.

***

"I know they have pizza and beer in England," Xander said, "so you can stop looking at it like it's going to bite you."

"I recognize it," Giles said. "I'm just not quite certain what it's doing here."

"I showed up at dinnertime. This is better than expecting you to feed me, isn't it?" And this wasn’t any kind of emotional-bonding, hey-I-miss-Buffy-too, thing. It was just the two token guys (again with the Spike not counting) having beer and pizza after work. 

And the fact that he was still kind of worried about Giles being by himself all the time probably wouldn't come up in conversation. Xander didn't plan to mention it, anyway. 

There was one thing he could say about Giles; by now, he knew when it was easiest to just give in. He cleared off space on the counter for Xander to set down the pizza box. "This really wasn't necessary."

"Yeah, it was." He grinned. "Anya's doing inventory, and if I go anywhere near her, she'll make me help." He'd spent enough time here last year that he had no problem going through the kitchen cabinets until he found the plates, handing Giles one without waiting to be asked. 

"Aren't you still too young to buy beer?" Giles asked as Xander opened the pizza box. 

"I might--although I would like to point out that I'm not admitting anything--still have the fake ID I used to get that bartending job." It wasn't like Xander used it very often, but this had seemed like a pizza-and-beer occasion. Although maybe not, considering the way Giles was looking at the six-pack. "What?"

"Nothing," Giles said. He took a can, but set it down without opening it. 

Okay, Xander decided, that was the last time he decided what beer to buy based on the contents of Uncle Rory's fridge. It wasn't like he was some kind of professional beer-taster. It probably wouldn't turn them into cavemen, and that was enough to make it okay by Xander. 

Whether Giles liked the beer or not, he seemed not to mind the company all that much. Xander repeated the stories Anya had been telling him about work, and Giles smiled and sort-of laughed in the right places. 

Maybe they were just faking that things were normal, but at least they could fake it now.

***

Xander was watching a movie with Dawn when he discovered that apparently the rest of the world thought Budweiser was lousy beer. One mystery solved, then, because he'd kept an eye on the liquor bottles on Giles' bookcase, and it wasn't that Giles had quit drinking altogether. (He pretended not to be relieved that while the level of liquid went down, it happened pretty slowly. Like there was anything he could do about it if it hadn't been.)

The next time he'd brought dinner over, he went to the liquor store first, but walked away empty-handed. American beer might not be good enough for British-type people, but it also wasn't almost nine bucks a six-pack. 

Not even for Giles, he thought, which was in the top three weirdest things he'd thought that day.

***

It wasn't like he saw Giles every night. Some evenings he helped Anya at the store, and some evenings he hung out with Dawn and Willow and Tara, and sometimes he went home and watched TV.

But it was a lot of nights, and Xander liked that. He didn’t know what Giles thought about it, but he figured if Giles had really hated it, he'd have told Xander to go away instead of letting him put Domino's and Hunan Express on his speed-dial. 

Of course, Giles being Giles, he probably hadn't been using the speed-dial for anything anyway.

***

Things they talked about:

  * Why baseball was better than cricket. Xander argued passionately for the American national pastime even though he'd warmed the bench in Little League and he'd paid Jesse ten bucks never to tell anyone, ever, about seventh-grade tryouts. He might suck at baseball, but at least he knew what was going on. 
  * The Magic Box, although Xander found himself repeating Anya's stories less and less often, and just mentioning the stuff he'd been there for. 
  * Dawn's uncanny ability to figure out who killed Mr. Boddy within a couple of turns, which would have been a short conversation except that Giles kept getting the name of the game wrong. Xander was used to there being weird British words for stuff, but there was no way they'd managed to mess up something as simple as _Clue_. 
  * Xander's job. That was kind of strange, because construction was about the last thing he'd have expected Giles to be interested in, but Giles listened anyway. He even remembered who the people Xander talked about were, which was pretty impressive since Xander was sure Giles did not, actually, care. 
  * Sometimes, very rarely, Buffy, but always stuff that had happened a long time ago, back when the world had only sucked about half the time. 



***

Things they didn't talk about, ever:

  * The Buffybot, even if Willow was doing what she swore was the final round of adjustments. There had been four "final rounds" by Flag Day, so it wasn't like there'd be much to say anyway. 
  * Dawn, and how much Xander worried about her now that Buffy was gone. There probably wasn't anything anyone could do, even if he had told Giles. 
  * The fact that Willow had told him the other night that she was researching resurrection spells. She'd made him swear not to, and besides, he was pretty sure that also fell under "nothing anybody could do about it." 
  * His engagement, even though Xander could have used someone who could tell him whether he was the luckiest guy on earth or just stupid. Depending on when you asked him, he could go either way. 
  * The dream Xander had one night that had made it impossible for him to look Giles in the eye for three days afterwards. 
  * How much they missed Buffy--except sometimes, Xander thought that maybe they talked about that all the time, just not in so many words. 



***

Xander knew Giles had to be pretty much done putting together all that data Willow had wanted, but it still surprised him a little when he dropped Anya off at the Magic Box one morning and Giles was already there.

Giles smiled and said good morning and acted perfectly normal--normal-normal, not normal for the guy who kept trying to explain the rules of Bizarro Baseball to him--which was what he was supposed to be doing. That was what they were all supposed to be doing, wasn't it? Getting back to normal. 

But Xander went to work in a lousy mood anyway, and yelled at one of the new guys for such a minor screw-up that Xander wound up buying the guy lunch to make up for it.

***

Giles wasn't actually home when Xander got there, but that hadn't stopped him so far. He let himself in, going into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face--it had been about a hundred degrees at the site today--and then coming out to order dinner. He could have done that from the car, but the way they knew the address just from the caller ID was kind of cool.

There was a notepad on the desk by the phone, and while Xander hadn't intended to read it, he had to do something while he was on hold, or he was going to go crazy listening to what sounded like "Muskrat Love" in Chinese--and what kind of evil did you have to be before that sounded like good "hold" music, anyway?--so he looked at it.

Giles' handwriting, dates and dollar amounts in neat columns, next to words like "United" and "Continental" and "British Airways." It took a minute for him to realize what that meant, and by that time, he was already off hold and trying to decide whether they needed two egg rolls or four. 

When Giles got home a few minutes later, he didn't mention that he'd been calling airlines, and Xander didn't mention that he already knew. It could be anything, after all. It could be nothing. It could be none of his business, and the tight feeling in his chest could be his imagination, and so he left it alone. 

He went to the bathroom, instead, calling Dawn on his cell phone and promising that he'd sit through an entire boy-band concert video without mockage if she'd call him back in five minutes and not ask any questions. When she did, he gave Giles a mumbled apology and twenty bucks to cover the Chinese food, and left. 

He was glad he'd decided Giles wasn't worth nine-dollar beer, he thought, and it was only the second weirdest thought he'd had that day.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
